[MUSIC] You are welcome to this lecture, which focuses on working in pairs, triads and groups.

As we earlier discussed, the classroom involves social interactions, and a teacher can capitalise on these interactions to promote learning. There are four ways which these can be done. One of them is working in pairs. The other is working in triads. The third one, which I'm sure you are all familiar with is working in groups. And then we have the fourth one, which is snowballing. Working in pairs involves pupil turning and talking to each other. After the teacher has posed a question, pairs of children are encourage to turn to each other. One listens while the other answers. This way, half of the class is engaged in talking, and it is easier for children to pay attention to the speaker in a paired situation. Now, be sure that children know ahead of time who their partner is and that they practice how to pair up. You'll however need to balance the situation where children are given the opportunity to choose their own partners, thus engaging them in the process, and at the same time avoiding the situation where some children will not find partners, just because others wouldn't want to pair with them. You must ensure that every child gets a partner. This should move quickly, so keep the pace brisk to support children staying on task. That is working in pairs. The second is working in triads. In this situation, we have three learners involved. We have the talker, the listener, and the observer. Now, basic idea of this is to help children to develop speaking skills, strengthen their speaking skills and to develop listening skills, and then to develop observational skills. The talker explains something, perhaps through storytelling, while the listener tries not only to understand the content of what

is being said, but the feelings behind the content, and also, make meaning of what the story's all about. The observer, on the other hand, will be concerned with the activities involved in the listening, looking at the essentials, the eye contact, is the listener really engaged in the whole process and at the end of the day he or she will give feedback to the listener and then the talker. And this type of grouping helps in promoting interaction between these three people and helps in consolidating their speaking skills, listening skills, and observational skills. This is a grouping that is not common in some schools but it is worth trying it in your school. Now, you remember the story I told you about the primary four teacher in Ghana who faults an answer provided by a pupil and was wrong. Imagine, that in a professional development webshow, I'm telling the story to a colleague teacher, and there is a third person. The role of the third person, who will be playing the role of the observer will be to observe the listener to find out whether the listener is making any meaning of what I was telling him or her. And that whether there's any feelings behind the listening posture of the listener. In this way, we'll be able to go beyond just content in storytelling by attaching meaning to the story that is told. The triad model is very, very important and applicable in schools when we want to offer learners the opportunity to go beyond stories, to this point of making meaning of what is meant. Now, we go to the third one which is working in groups. This is a common technique that is used in most classrooms. But there are certain issues that teachers need to consider when asking children to work in groups. One of them is experience. What experiences do the groupings, the members of the group, have? Or what experience do you expect them to

have in order to work effectively in the group? What are these expectations? You need to consider the size of the group, too. Averagely, a size of five will be more appropriate. Of course, I admit that at times large classes, managing large classes will make it difficult to use smaller sizes. But, it is very helpful if group members will make meaning of whatever activity engaging in the group to have smaller sizes. Then you also need to think about a space, because the groups must have space to work in. Then, what I consider to be the most important, you must make clear the task involved in the group work. When a task is not clearly spelt out the group work tends to be a play activity, which would not promote the learner. And it also makes it very difficult for the teacher to measure the expected outcomes and the benefits. The group activity must not be left unmonitored. It is very important that the teacher, after putting children in groups to work and assigning them a task, move from each group to the other, encouraging the children, helping them out, and ensuring that no one child dominates, the activities. So, these six things must be considered. Experience and expectations, size of group, space, task of the group, monitoring of group activity and outcomes. They're issues that need to be considered. Now, allocating and assuming roles. Who does what in the groups? Who leads the group? What might these roles be? What should go into it? Chairing the group, what should the chairperson of the group do?

Who takes notes? Who reports? Who will be the researcher? Who will be the timekeeper? Who will be the evaluator? These are things that need to be considered if the group would be properly organised and then work towards the prescribed task. Questions such as, how do they differ? If we take leading the group and chairing the group, how would their paths differ? How would it be decided, who decides on the leader? Should the teacher impose the leader on the group? Or should group members be allowed and encouraged to choose their own leader? For me, it is helpful if the teacher guides the pupils, themselves, to choose their leader. What learning would it involve? And as I've already said, it is very important that a task is clearly defined and this should be done. The fourth technique of grouping in a classroom is snowballing. In snowballing, the first pair is encouraged to join another pair in which case you get a membership of four. Then, after the activity, one member of that four could join another group to form another group. In so doing, it helps children to exchange ideas with different groups of people, and then also helps in sharing new ideas. This is also a very important technique of grouping. One, in promoting social interaction in the classroom, and then also helping each child to identify the good in the other, and it is worth trying in your school. Snowballing. Now, what do you have to do? Could you consider discussing with your colleagues how they use, or might use different arrangements in their classes? The four we just talked about are just examples, there could be others. Discuss this with your colleagues.

Discuss with your colleagues some of the constraints, and how they might be dealt with. For example, in situations where you have very large classes, how can you deal with large classes within the context of grouping? Discuss with students how to make better use of classroom space? And then lastly, decide to try something different in your classroom. Could you invite a critical friend to observe and comment what you do in the classroom? I thank you for listening. Until we meet again, I say, goodbye. [MUSIC]